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“I’m here.” Leon strode into the room and planted his hands down on the table. He leaned over the receiver. “Why are you calling? This isn’t a secure line.”
Sebastian took up a spot next to Martha and nodded. “The Klah’Eel could be intercepting this.”
“Is that Sebastian?” The relief was so palpable in Joan’s voice that it came through the bad audio. “Thank god. We’ll need him.”
“Speak cautiously, Joan,” Martha snapped. “The Klah’Eel—”
“Hopefully have no idea.” Joan’s voice came out loud enough that Sebastian winced. “We’re on Carta. We’re with the Carta Cartel, and they think they’ve rigged something up to sneak this communication in. But it doesn’t matter! There’s no time for talking in code.”
Leon glanced back and met Sebastian’s eyes. Sebastian didn’t try to look any less grim than he felt. Sebastian had never heard Joan sound so frantic, and from the furrow in Leon’s brow, neither had he.
Leon looked back at the receiver, his hands pressed so hard into the table in front of him the tips of his fingers turned white. “What’s happening, Joan?”
“The Turners are sneaking a freight ship into Tava.”
“With the gas?” Sebastian shouldered his way past Leon to get to the speaker, as though being closer would make the words make more sense. “How?”
Martha pressed up just behind him. “They should barely have been able to make enough to fill a freight, much less get it ready for transport and arrive already.”
Joan’s scoff sounded like a particularly loud burst of static. “Well, they’re not exactly following proper shipping protocol.”
Sebastian’s mind flew through the possibilities. “Mercenaries? Smugglers?”
“Looks like a smuggler freight,” Joan confirmed. “But it’s definitely guarded by Turner security ships.”
“How could the Turners have even made that much?” Leon shook his head. “Sebastian blew up their factory.”
Sebastian gritted his teeth. “The Turners have other factories.”
“Or it’s a decoy.” Leon rapped his knuckle on the table.
“They’re going through a lot of trouble to hide a decoy.” Joan sounded even less convinced than Sebastian. “The cartel’s scientist thinks it must be some particularly unstable variant. That they must have skipped at least half the refinement process.”
Sebastian straightened up with a stray bit of hope. “So then, how do we know it’s still effective?”
“The same way we know it’s not a decoy,” Joan all but screamed at them, and the static peaked loud enough to make all three of them wince. “They wouldn’t do all this for an ineffective freighter-load of shit.”
“And what is ‘all this’?” Martha demanded. “Where are you seeing this freighter? None of our observation points show anything.”
“All of our observation points are in Southern Tava.” Joan’s voice dropped back down to a normal level. “You don’t have the angle to see them.”
“Why not?” Leon banged his palm on the desk. “Where are they?”
Sebastian turned away and closed his eyes. He pushed his brain to draw out the planet and the system and the orbits. He snapped them open as it all clicked into place. “They’re behind the moon.”
Leon let out a low groan of understanding. “Their visual would be blocked from us but perfectly visible to Carta.”
Sebastian ran his hands through his hair. “They wouldn’t have known we’d have people there. They thought they could sneak in.”
Joan’s voice crackled back at them. “And they still might. The moon is only over Southern Tava for another three hours. After that, it—Fuck.”
“Joan?” Leon grabbed the receiver. “Joan, what happened?”
Muffled voices through the static, and then Joan said, “Cartel says the line isn’t secure anymore. We’re cutting ou—”
Joan’s voice disappeared and left only the mind-numbing drone of static. Leon turned away, rubbing his fingers over his temples, and then Martha switched it off. They stood there for a moment in the deafening silence.
Leon dragged his hand over his face and pulled his shoulders back. “If the Klah’Eel get their hands on an entire freight of that gas, this war is over.”
